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The numbers were big: nearly 600 new jobs and a 20,000 square foot expansion by IT services company 1901 Group. The announcement last month was the latest success story at Virginia Tech’s Corporate Research Center—a foundation-owned business park located next to the university in Blacksburg.

Since it began in 1985, the CRC, as it is known, has grown to dozens of private companies employing nearly 3,000 people. Its CEO says a collaoration culture is building everything from blockchain to biomedical technology to black garlic right in the New River Valley.

When it's running, CellInk's top of the line bioprinter doesn’t sound that different from your home printer. But it’s at the cutting edge of biomedical research.

Started in part by a Virginia Tech graduate in 2016, CellInk’s Blacksburg office is tucked away in one of the 33 buildings at Virginia Tech’s Corporate Research Center. The company’s Chief BioInk Officer, Patrick Thayer, explains the process. "Bioink is a bio material that has been adapted for use in a 3D bioprinter for printing all sorts of stuff such as tissue constructs or drug screening models," Thayer says. "If you imagine you want to print a millimeter thick, three centimeters by five centimeters skin graft, based on your density, you could print that in about five minutes."